The design will also potentially reduce manufacturing costs for
suppliers, the companies said.

Solus/Clements invented the design, called H-PAS (Hybrid
Pressure Acceleration System). Atlantic Technology will license the design to
other companies and collaborate on additional design development with
Solus/Clements.

Atlantic will demonstrate a proof-of-concept model at September's
CEDIA Expo, where it will pack two 4.5-inch drivers in an enclosure of about 1.4
cubic feet to produce bass that extends to 29 Hz (-3dB), the company said. The
speaker's sound pressure level will exceed 105dB with harmonic distortion at
less than 3 percent. "Conventionally designed loudspeaker systems would require
bass drivers of at least triple the size in an enclosure at least twice as
large to produce comparable performance," the company said.

Atlantic will ship its first
H-PAS product, the H-PAS-1 floorstanding speaker, in the fourth quarter. Solus/Clements will deliver a tower and bookshelf model
early next year.

The completely passive patent-pending design requires no active
electronics and no special drivers, and it's compatible with conventional
amplifiers and A/V receivers, Atlantic said. H-PAS
combines elements of bass-reflex, inverse-horn and transmission-line cabinet
design, the company explained. The designs "are cascaded one to another to
pressurize and accelerate low frequencies," and the audio signal is passed through
a passive resonance/harmonic distortion line filter, Atlantic
continued.

"This new system," Atlantic president Peter Tribeman
contends, "is the first ever to break the famous iron law of loudspeaker
design." That law, he said, states that among three major goals of speaker
design - deep bass extension, a compact enclosure and good efficiency - speaker
designers must chose two at the expense of the third. "For the very first time,
due to [Sonus/Clement designer] Phil Clements' breakthrough design, we can have
them all," Tribeman said.

H-PAS "has applications in almost every corner of the loudspeaker
business," he added.